Wazuh is a free and open source platform used for threat prevention, detection, and response. Starting in version 3.9.0 and prior to version 4.14.3, a privilege escalation vulnerability exists in the Wazuh Manager's cluster synchronization protocol. The wazuh-clusterd service allows authenticated nodes to write arbitrary files to the manager’s file system with the permissions of the wazuh system user.

Due to insecure default permissions, the wazuh user has write access to the manager's main configuration file (/var/ossec/etc/ossec.conf). By leveraging the cluster protocol to overwrite ossec.conf, an attacker can inject a malicious <localfile> command block. The wazuh-logcollector service, which runs as root, parses this configuration and executes the injected command.

This chain allows an attacker with cluster credentials to gain full Root Remote Code Execution, violating the principle of least privilege and bypassing the intended security model. Version 4.14.3 fixes the issue.